The Patagonian expert - in every way - and resident Rolando Garibotti, in a SuperTopo post today (January 19), praises Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk's dramatic feat on the Southeast Ridge of Cerro Torre, specifies the particulars as far as known, and reports that the two removed a multitude of bolts on the descent: "The Compressor route is no more," he stated.

The two, he reports, chopped the bolts on the headwall and one of the pitches below it.

"Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk made a very fast ascent (13 hours from the Col of Patience to the top) of the SE ridge of Cerro Torre on what for sometime we have been calling 'fair means' style, which implies not using Maestri's insane bolt ladders," Garibotti states. "We presume they used some of Maestri's belays but in pitches only clipped 5 bolts, four placed by Ermanno Salvaterra on his 1999 variation and one placed by Chris Geisler on his and Jason's variations last season."

He lauds Kruk and Kennedy's action for returning a beautiful mountain to a more natural state, typical of

high alpine peaks, and refers readers to a 2007 Rock and Ice article in which he explicated his opinions:
http://www.pataclimb.com/knowledge/articles/CTbolts.html. 

Responding, while expressing his enormous  respect for Garibotti and calling himself still overwhelmed by all the news, Greg Crouch, author of Enduring Patagonia, decries Caesar Maestri’s original, 1959 first-ascent story as a "complete hoax,"  later followed by his strange 1970 ascent using a compressor and line of bolts, but found he had mixed feelings about the chopping. "I’m sure I can get used to the idea, and the mountain is certainly closer to its original state than it was a few days ago," Crouch writes, "but on the other hand, it’s the end of an incredible story, and I think 'the story' might be the thing I like most about climbing — whether mine or someone else’s."

The dramatic climb's concurrent action is bound to be controversial. One corps of climbers will celebrate the action on principle and in support of mountain ethics, and others will feel that through retroactive action they have lost a dream or opportunity to climb the great peak.

As of January 20, Crouch posts again, generating a string of comments of both opinions (from, as he soon notes, people from 40 countries), and the SuperTopo thread has 200 comments.